


to build a home

by tusktooth



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Holidays, Miscommunication, Romantic Gestures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21882628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tusktooth/pseuds/tusktooth
Summary: Flying home for Christmas without Gansey by her side was unbearable.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	to build a home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bymine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bymine/gifts).



> this is a gift for the [ravencyclenetwork](http://ravencyclenetwork.tumblr.com/) holiday exchange for [ali!](http://bymine.tumblr.com/)  
> ali I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and enjoy this! I decided to write you a fic bc I'm still fairly new to editing and I wanted to give you a gift I knew I did well. It's a bit angstier than I meant it to be ngl but there is of course a happy ending!!!

If you were to ask Blue about all the things that she hated most in life, fighting with Gansey and crying in public would both be on the top of the list, just below evil aunts and deadly kisses. So, naturally, as she sat in the dumb Winnipeg airport waiting for her stupid plane to board she was trying desperately to keep from breaking down again, this time because her delayed flight could result in her missing her connection and she just didn’t need anything else on her plate right now.

She thought back to last night and the bitter words she had shared with Gansey. She probably took it too far, as she often did. Sometimes she figured out exactly what to say to twist the knife and didn’t have the filter to stop herself from saying it. Gansey was good at that too, but he was more subtle and calculating about it and certainly didn’t do it just to upset somebody.

Over the past year and a half, Blue and Gansey had both been incredibly flexible with their plans. The original idea was to travel the country with Henry, following the ley lines and investigating anomalies of the magical variety. Their road trip had quickly expanded to include other parts of the continent when Gansey had heard of mysterious monsters popping up in a small town just across the Mexican border, where they met another dreamer, a young girl who was enamored with legends and lore. Eventually, after Gansey had numerous heated conversations with his parents, their gap year had expanded into something without a definite end. Henry had to leave because he truly only planned on traveling for one year, so they dropped him off at his fancy university and made more vague plans for a trip to Venezuela that she feared would never actually occur.

And then it was just the two of them and, when Blue joked that it would never be the same, that three was the ideal number, Gansey only shrugged and told her that the third was the world now. And he was right. They fell easily into a pattern, exploring places unknown together and discovering things both about the universe and themselves along the way. There had always been an element of comfort to their relationship, driving around aimlessly in the Pig in companionable quietness even before they were an official thing. Now that was even truer. She knew Gansey like she knew herself, from what all of his favorite and least favorite things were to what he was thinking and how exactly he thought about it. She felt that it was safe to assume that this indescribably deep connection went both ways, that he could predict her thoughts without the cards that her mother needed.

So, when Christmas rolled around in that second year, Blue thought that it was safe to assume that they would be heading back home to celebrate with their respective families. They had done it last year, rolling into town two days before. They had been in the general region on a disappointingly less than fruitful search for the truth to what exactly Mothman was and if there was any validity to the myths of Point Pleasant, so cutting it close wasn’t a huge deal, especially since she had handmade gifts for everyone at 300 Fox Way on the road.

This year, the holidays happened to fall during a time where they were in the southern middle area of Canada, investigating various hauntings that Gansey believed to be connected. Blue wasn’t quite so sure of anything except that it was far too cold for her tastes but she was happy enough to follow him.

And then last night she asked Gansey if they were flying home or if he was going to risk potential road closures when they were already cutting it so close.

He had looked at her with a blank, extremely confused expression and simply said, “I assumed that we wouldn’t be going back for the holidays this year. We’ve got a lot of work to get done here and it’s so far. Besides, we have each other.”

“That’s not good enough,” Blue had said, crossing her arms over her chest.”I want to see my family for the holidays since I barely see them otherwise. It’s important to me.”

“Well, then you should have told me that,” he replied. “I mean, while I quite value this research, I could have worked around it so we could have revisited some of the things I’ve been after in New England before heading up here to investigate the hauntings. Now it’s simply too late to reroute the whole trip. I mean, I wanted to sit in the church on the night of the 24th to see if Christmas has any effect on the haunting, seeing as it is a Christian church.”

“Well, I want to be  _ home  _ for Christmas Eve,” she snapped. “Don’t you want to see your family at all?”

He shrugged. “They know I love them. Besides, I can always give them a call.”

“My mom knows that I love her but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to  _ see _ her!” she shouted.

“What do you expect me to do?” he asked her, maintaining a level of calmness that she’d moved past a long time ago. “Christmas is in less than a week and we have plans already.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll walk home if I have to.”

“Jane, don’t be ridic-”

“No!” she shouted. “You do  _ not  _ get to tell me that. You know how important my family is to me! I get that you have a different relationship with yours, one that feels more like them putting up with you than anything, but that doesn’t mean you can just  _ assume _ that I wouldn’t want to spend the holidays with mine.”

“You didn’t tell me,” he said quietly, looking a bit hurt for her comment about his family.

“Well, I don’t think that I should have to force you to think of people other than yourself when you don’t directly benefit,” she snapped, regretting the words as soon as they exited her mouth.

Gansey looked absolutely crestfallen. If attacking his relationship with his family had been a step over the line, going after his character was running a bulldozer over it.

But she didn’t take the words back and she certainly didn’t apologize, instead standing with her head held high and refusing to look into his eyes.

She felt his eyes on him for a moment before he let out a deep sigh. “I’ll book your trip home and drive you to the airport tomorrow. Call me when you’d like to return to our trip so I can arrange to get you to wherever I may be.”

“You’re not going to come,” she said flatly.

“I told you. I’ve got things to do.”

And so here she was. Alone. In the stupid Winnipeg airport. And her flight was delayed. Traveling alone sucked ass.

* * *

Everything felt a little better once she was at home. Seeing everyone felt amazing after such a long time apart. This was certainly the longest that she’d been away, seeing as the last time she was home was in April for St. Mark’s Eve. Gansey had no issues returning home with her for  _ that _ but, of course, he had wanted to investigate it anyway.

Luckily, all the women of Fox Way were gracious enough not to ask her about him because she hadn’t actually talked to him in a few days unless you were to count the text from him that basically said he was giving her space and that she should call him when she felt a bit better. And also that he loved her, but she didn’t really want to think about that right now.

If there was no communication, it was much easier for her to pretend that there wasn’t actually a problem. Except when she arranged to have lunch with Adam and Ronan on Christmas Eve and was worried about being the third wheel. Or when she slept in her bed and was all too aware of the arms that weren’t wrapped around her.

Still, not being outwardly reminded of it was nice, at least while it lasted.

It was three days before Christmas that it was brought up to her. In a rare twist of fate, only Blue, her mother, and Mr. Gray were home.

Calla was off begrudgingly visiting her mother for the day, making it clear to the rest of them that she was  _ not  _ her family and the people she really cared about were them throughout the days leading up to it.

The rest of them were gone for a far more horrifying reason, though the others around the house seemed to be less horrified by it. Apparently, the project of the year had been assimilating Gwenllian and Artemus to modern society and, by some twist of terrible magic, Orla had managed to secure Gwenllian a  _ date _ . As in with a real human person. Whoever this poor woman was, at least she was going to have some interesting stories to tell after. Orla and Jimi had gone for moral support, opting to sit at a different table of course, and dragged Artemus along so that he could get more experience with normal interaction.

They had also invited Blue and, as entertaining as that had sounded, she wanted to spend some time with her mother instead. Now, as she sat on the couch between her mom and Mr. Gray as some dumb romantic comedy played, she realized that she was probably interrupting something.

As the credits rolled, her mom stood up and gave Blue a kiss on the cheek before planting another on Mr. Gray’s lips, something that she certainly hadn’t wanted to witness. “I’m going to make some popcorn and tea and then we can start a new movie, okay?”

“So,” Mr. Gray said after she was in the kitchen.

She raised her eyebrows. “So?”

“You’ve had an interesting year,” he said. “Traveling.”

“Yup,” she replied.

“I’m surprised that boy isn’t with you,” he said. “Fighting?”

“HEY!” Maura yelled from the kitchen, running back into the living room to lightly swat at the back of Mr. Gray’s head. “We talked about this!”

Blue crossed her arms. “You told everyone not to talk to me about Gansey.”

“I think you’ve known that I did since you got here,” she replied. “I mean, even if I weren’t psychic I would have known that it’s probably a sore subject from the way you were crying on the phone the other day when you told me you were coming home. Or just from the fact that he isn’t here and you haven’t once brought him up.”

“Well, we’re fine,” she snapped.

“Okay,” Maura replied.

“We  _ are _ ,” she insisted.

Her mother turned to Mr. Gray. “Please pick a movie while I make popcorn.”

“My bad,” said Mr. Gray as he grabbed the binder full of DVDs and began to flip through it. “What do you want to watch?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “Horror.”

“Not romance,” he inferred.

“Just STOP TALKING!” her mom yelled from the kitchen.

Blue forced a smile. “I think I’ll just go take a nap and leave the two of you to your date. Wake me up when the others get home so I can get every detail about whatever is going on with Gwenllian.”

As she trudged up the stairs two things were glaringly obvious: she missed Gansey and she hated that she did.

* * *

Ronan had been in charge of choosing the location for lunch and he decided to choose Nino’s, so basically Blue was going to beat his ass as soon as he walked through the doors. They were only five minutes late and she had already been approached by three of her former coworkers asking about her North American road trip and her fancy rich boyfriend. She didn’t know how they had acquired all this information seeing as she never really spoke to any of them, but they had it nonetheless.

“Sorry,” Adam said, a little out of breath as he slid into the booth across from her, Ronan following closely behind with bags under his eyes.

Still, he found it in him to smirk. “We were  _ busy _ .”

“Yeah, we had an unf-” Adam started before realizing what Ronan was implying and flushing red. “We were  _ not _ . There was just a dream incident. I’m sure you’ve heard about how hectic Ronan’s life has been lately. And always, I guess.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“I figured,” she replied before turning to Adam. “How’s school? Still surviving over the stuffy upper-crusts?”

He smiled and shrugged. “I’m used to it by now. And classes are pretty good. I’ve worked so hard to get here, you know? And I’m proud of where I am, even though it sometimes feels like I still don’t belong there.”

“How are you enjoying running around the country doing fuck all and calling it research?” asked Ronan.

“It’s nice,” she replied. “We’ve been to so many interesting places and met far more interesting people, for better or for worse. And it’s great that I get to go on this whole adventure with Gansey. Well, most of the time.”

“Shocking,” he said. “Sometimes Gansey just doesn’t fucking get it.”

“He tries, though,” Adam said. “It’s just that sometimes he gets too caught up in whatever he’s currently fixated on and the entire world around him kind of disappears. But he always has the interests of the people he cares about somewhere in his heart.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely true,” she agreed. “But I’m still slightly pissed off at him.”

“Well, I said that he tries, not that he succeeds,” he replied. “What did he do?”

Ronan looked her over and then turned toward Adam. “She doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“So I’m just going to have to carry all conversation today. I see how it is.”

“Absolutely not,” Ronan replied. “Blue here has told me that _Gwenllian_ went on the date the other day and I personally want to hear all about that in vivid detail.”  
Adam raised an eyebrow. “This absolutely cannot be true.”

She nodded solemnly. “She went out with some woman that Orla helped set her up to and, I hate to say it, but it sounded like there will be more dates with her in the future.”

“That’s positively frightening,” he replied with a shake of his head.

“And yet I want to know so much more,” Ronan piped in. “What did she look like? What’s wrong with her? How did they hold any sort of conversation?”

She shook her head and looked at the empty coke glass in front of her. “I’m going to need a refill, preferably a spiked one, before I get into any of that.”

“Sorry, Sargent, I don’t have a flask on me,” Ronan replied as she gave him a hopeful glance.

“It’s okay, we’ll be here suffering with you,” Adam added.

“Fine,” she said with a smile and started retelling the story as Orla had told it to her. She was happy to be here with her friends, even though Gansey’s absence felt all the more pronounced.

* * *

Lunch with Ronan and Adam had inspired her to reach out and send Gansey a text, just wishing him a good Christmas and begrudgingly admitting that she did, in fact, miss him a lot. It was nearly ten o’clock now and he  _ still  _ hadn’t replied, which was very out of character for him, especially considering she knew he would have no problem getting service in Winnipeg since he paid dearly for international coverage which was, of course, nothing to him.

She was sitting in the living room alone because she was in an absolutely sour mood and nobody dared to be in the room with her out of self-preservation, which she supposed was valid seeing as she tended to lash out at anything and everything when she was like this. Even Gwenllian had the sense to stay away.

Briefly, Blue thought about calling up Ronan or Adam to rant about but she had already screwed up enough and she didn’t want to endanger her friendships by either putting them in an uncomfortable position or by saying something else that she might regret.

It was in times like these that she missed Noah. There never was any fear of a fight or lashing out when she talked to him. Noah had always been a listener, more so than the rest of them, and that was something that she admired about him. It was refreshing that, in a group of generally strong-headed people, there was always someone there who was a little more relaxed and helped to make you take a step back and just think of everything as it was.

Now he was gone. He had been gone for a while. And Blue still hadn’t quite figured out how to calmly put everything into perspective without him.

And that was the breaking point for her as the tears started falling. Blue hated crying, hated being perceived as anything less than strong, even though she knew emotional reaction and strength didn’t actually have any sort of relation.

There was a knocking at the door and she waited for someone else to get it, but nobody came down.

They knocked again.

“God,” Blue said, wiping her nose with her sleeve before yelling. “Can somebody  _ get  _ that?”

“I’m trying to sleep!” Orla called back, which was most definitely a lie.

She groaned as she pushed herself off of the couch, rubbing the tears from her eyes as she made her way to the door.

When she opened it, Gansey was standing on the other side, hands in his pockets. Upon seeing her puffy eyes, he frowned. “Have you been crying?”

“No,” she lied.

His frown deepened and he stepped forward, hugging her tightly to his chest. The smell of mint and feeling of warmth was almost overwhelming, a feeling of family just as strong as the one she felt when she set foot back at 300 Fox Way a few days prior.

“Why are you here?” she mumbled into her chest. “What about the haunting?”

He sighed. “You were right, I suppose. When you left, everything felt wrong. I realized that perhaps I did need a home for the holidays and that maybe the reason I had never thought of it before was because the home that I so desperately needed was  _ you _ . And, well, Adam and Ronan too, but mostly you, Jane.”

She pulled back. “What about your research?”

“The church has been haunted for over a hundred years, Jane. It’ll still be haunted when we get back,” he replied. “Besides, researching the lesser-known wonders of the world is hardly the same without you.”

“I missed you,” she said with a soft smile before her expression soured and she punched him in the arm.

“Oww, what?”

“That’s for not texting me back,” she told him, crossing her arms over her chest. “I thought you were ignoring me, asshole.”

“I left my charger in the hotel!” he protested. “I didn’t know you texted.”

She narrowed her eyes, but he seemed genuine. “Fine. You should come in. Unless you planned on staying at Ronan’s tonight.”

“Jesus Christ, no,” he replied. “They’re my two best friends in the world but I would like to keep all inklings of what they get up to in the night behind their closed doors, thank you very much.”

She laughed and grabbed his hand, pulling him in through the doorway. “Good. I missed sleeping next to you anyway. It’ll be a tight squeeze in my twin, but something tells me we’ll make it work.”

“Can’t be tighter than the Pig,” he pointed out. “We’ll make it work. We always do.”

Once they got to her room, he slid off his jeans and put his glasses on her nightstand before laying in the bed next to her, head resting on her chest and a long arm draped over her. To her surprise, he fell asleep almost immediately. Though his insomnia had improved a lot recently, it had not completely gone away.

It didn’t take her long to realize that him falling asleep so quickly signified that perhaps he hadn’t been sleeping very well the past few days, not that she had been sleeping much better. It broke her heart a little for a moment, but it also amplified the undeniable: they belonged together.

There would be stupid fights and occasional miscommunications but none of them would mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Because they were always going to have each other, on holidays and on every day that fell in between.

**Author's Note:**

> [come say hi!](http://tdeckers.tumblr.com/)


End file.
